Today’s financial reporting landscape is governed by three major forces:
- Evolving regulatory requirements, making it difficult for organizations to keep up.
- Rise of new technologies, such as Gen-AI, that comes with its own promises and perils.
- Reporting complexities driven by data overload that organizations struggle to navigate
With stakeholders, investors, and regulators demanding greater transparency and reporting accuracy, the pressure on finance teams is higher than ever.
To shed light on these challenges, we caught up with Roberto Nardi, Head of Consolidated Financial Statements and Reporting at Eni, for an exclusive webinar. With over 30 years of experience in financial reporting, Roberto shared valuable insights on how businesses can leverage AI and automation to streamline financial reporting and improve operational efficiency.
In this blog, we explore:
- Highlights of our conversation with Roberto
- How organizations can seamlessly integrate AI into their disclosure management process
- Managing data complexities and compliance with a tech-first approach
- His thoughts on the future of AI-led financial reporting
Disclosure Management: Simplifying Financial Reporting in the AI Era
The webinar with Roberto, joined by over 200 professionals from the reporting world, turned into an exciting session as we engaged in a freewheeling conversation, interspersed by polls and a live Q&A session.
Roberto kicked off the session by stating how disclosure management turns reporting into a strategic advantage for organizations. At a time where businesses are dealing with data overload, being able to draw meaningful insights from disconnected data and use them to drive decision-making and long-term strategy is no less than a superpower. He further added that disclosure management is no longer a ‘good-to-have’ solution, but a critical imperative for forward-thinking organizations to balance growth, transparency and compliance as they continue to scale.
Disclosure management turns reporting into a strategic advantage.
Financial reporting has predominantly been a manual, process-oriented job. Therefore, the advent of AI gives organizations the opportunity to automate manual tasks, save time, improve accuracy and stay compliant amidst rapidly shifting regulations. More importantly, businesses can now tap into data that otherwise went unused and uncover opportunities they didn’t know exist.
While the transition isn’t going to be simple, a strategic approach to adopting AI in financial reporting can give businesses an edge, setting them up to a world of new opportunities. Roberto cited examples of how ENI embraced robotic process automation and real-time data updates to elevate their reporting game – a transition that paved the road for long-term business growth.
Solutions to Watch Out For
- Disclosure management platforms: Integrated, cloud-based reporting platforms that can connect to any data source to centralize data collection and provide organizations with granular tools to work collaboratively work in building a report. This improves data transparency, eliminates silos and significantly reduces reporting time.
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPAs use bots to automate manual tasks, helping organizations save time and cost while improving efficiency and accuracy. RPAs also aid in sparing internal teams the monotony of repetitive tasks, keeping work exciting and meaningful.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): With AI making grand strives in the world of financial reporting, it’s important to understand and choose the right solution that suits your business needs. For instance, narrow AI is adept at solving problems and supporting decision-making in structured contexts, whereas generative AI harnesses deep learning to replicate human-like thinking and can therefore help in improving reporting intelligence.
AI in Finance: Q&A with Roberto Nardi
Question: As companies adopt new technologies, what steps can they take to ensure compliance during this transition?
Answer: Technology is crucial for improving the accuracy and reliability of financial reporting. While finance has embraced automation in many areas, reporting has lagged. Manual processes in the final reporting stages are often error-prone and time-consuming, increasing stress and risk.
Adopting modern disclosure management systems with automated workflows helps reduce manual effort, ensures real-time data accuracy, and gives finance teams more control. This shift frees up time for higher-value work while strengthening compliance and reducing the risk of fraud.
Reducing manual work using technology lowers the risk of fraud and errors.
Q: Data collection emerged as a major challenge in disclosure management. How did your team at ENI address it?
Answer: Data collection is challenging but ENI tackled data collection challenges by implementing a disclosure management system that connects data sources and automates updates. This shift from manual processes significantly reduced errors and saved time.
To transition from traditional systems to AI, focus on:
- Setting clear goals like improving accuracy and transparency
- Choosing the right tools and partners
- Carefully designing processes, including mapping data sources
From a security standpoint, cloud-based platforms are secure when paired with proper IT oversight. Technology, without a doubt, plays a pivotal role in meeting compliance needs, such as XBRL tagging, helping finance teams stay in control throughout the process.
Adopting disclosure management wasn’t just a tech upgrade—it was a strategic move to protect our credibility.
Q: Real-time data updates were highlighted as a significant challenge in disclosure management. How did ENI address this issue?
Answer: Real-time data updates are a major challenge in financial reporting. In the past, teams spent hours checking that figures from source systems matched the final reports. With disclosure management systems, this process is automated.
By linking data sources—like consolidation systems—to the reporting platform, data updates flow seamlessly. For example, when a business unit closes its books, the data is automatically reflected in the final report.
Templates and disclosures are directly connected to the source, so even last-minute changes appear instantly. This automation gives teams confidence in the accuracy of their reports while saving time and reducing manual checks—making it a real game-changer.
With disclosure management, real-time updates are no longer a dream—they’re a standard.
Q: Will AI ever fully automate financial disclosure management, or will there always be a need for some level of human oversight?
Answer: I believe that the human operator in the financial report still has to play a main role. While technology supports the process, financial professionals must remain in full control—over design, deadlines, and report quality.
Disclosure management systems boost confidence by automating data connections and updates, reducing manual work. What once took days can now be done instantly, allowing teams to focus on what matters most: ensuring disclosures are accurate, complete, and investor ready.
By automating repetitive tasks, professionals can concentrate on higher-value activities. With investors becoming more sophisticated and quicker to react, using technology wisely is essential to protect both share performance and company reputation.
AI doesn’t replace people—it frees them to focus on what really matters: analysis, insight, and quality.
Q: How do features of current disclosure management platforms help organizations, and how can AI help?
Answer: Disclosure management platforms offer scalability and end-to-end control. Organizations can expand the system to handle more reports, automate tagging and filing, and integrate multiple data sources.
This level of automation replaces outdated practices, like relying on external financial printers, with a more efficient, centralized approach. AI can further enhance this by enabling intelligent automation across the process, improving speed, accuracy, and flexibility.
Q: With emerging technologies like blockchain and AI, how can financial professionals keep up and what does the future look like for them?
Answer: ENI has always embraced innovation—not just in its core energy business, but also in financial reporting. The company uses technology to automate routine tasks, improve accuracy, and refocus people on higher-value work, not to cut jobs.
We have adopted disclosure management for U.S. reporting and are expanding it across the organization after seeing strong results. ENI is also using big data analytics, robotic process automation, and narrow AI to streamline tasks like accrual tracking and order processing.
ENI has always embraced innovation—not just in its core energy business, but also in financial reporting.
